Is the North Atlantic oscillation just a pink noise?

• Published in: Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
• Main Authors: Fernández, Isabel, Hernández Flores, Carmen N., Pacheco Castelao, José Miguel
• Other Authors: 8973113600, 57198177387, 24741104100, 7569191, 5322222, 5549935, WOS:Fernandez, I, WOS:Hernandez, CN, WOS:Pacheco, JM
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: 12 Matemáticas; 250207 Climatología regional; NOA; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10553/43909; https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-4371(03)00056-6

In this paper the authors address the problem of predictability for the NAO index series. The spectral analysis, completed with a bootstrap procedure, shows a rather featureless structure of the index. In other words, the actual time series could be a realisation of many different stochastic processes. An analysis of the Hurst exponent does suggest a slightly red noise as a model for the index, which is interpreted as the NAO being driven by meteorological noise. A nonlinear study of the series (embedding dimension, fractal correlation dimension and leading Lyapunov exponent) shows little predictive performance as well. 714 705